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Living with the Land
Living with the Land (originally Listen to the Land) is a ride located within The Land pavilion in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. It is a slow-moving boat ride, which is part dark-ride and part greenhouse tour. The focus on the ride is on agriculture, especially new technology to make agriculture more efficient and environmentally friendly. Attraction Premise *Gain a newfound appreciation for where your food comes from on this cruise through the living laboratories of Epcot. *Many of your favorite foodstuffs - chocolate, coffee, vanilla, tomatoes, and rice, to name a few - grow on trees, vines and now even in soil-less environments. See firsthand how Disney’s horticulturalists are using innovative growing techniques and cross-breeding high-yield crops with the goal of sustaining our growing global population. Attraction Summary The dark-ride portion of the attraction opens with a scene of a deciduous forest in the middle of a thunderstorm, illustrating how the forces that shape the land can appear destructive to us. The boat then sails through artificial biomes representing a tropical rainforest, a desert, and the American prairie. Some of the Audio-Animatronic figures in this section were originally created for the never-built Magic Kingdom attraction, Western River Expedition. The biomes feature sound and lighting effects, in addition to heat, wind, and mist, to simulate real conditions. The boats float through a small theater that illustrates the relationship between humans and the environment, and the ways that we have been modifying the land to better serve our purposes. The second part of the attraction takes place in The Land's "Living Laboratory", which showcases ideas about the future of agriculture. There are five distinct areas of the "living laboratory" which includes the Tropic Greenhouse, Aquacell, Temperate Greenhouse, String Greenhouse, and the Creative Greenhouse. It also contains the Biotechnology Lab and the Integrated Pest Management Lab. All of the plants in this section are grown through various methods of hydroponics. Plants are grown in sand, perlite, coconut coir and rockwool. Timeline *October 1, 1982 - Listen to the Land opens *September 27, 1993 - Listen to the Land closes, original opening scene, song, and ending are removed. *December 10, 1993 - Living with the Land re-opens with new "thunderstorm" opening scene, musical score, and ending. *2004 - Disney's Fastpass option added. *August 20, 2006 - Cast members no longer narrate the second portion of the ride. Instead, an automatic audio spiel featuring the voice of Mike Brassell (also the narrator for the Tomorrowland Transit Authority at the Magic Kingdom Park as of October 2009) plays at each greenhouse scene, activated by RFID tags attached to the flume wall. The spiel is updated periodically as the greenhouses are replanted. *August 2, 2009 - The attraction Closed for Refurbishment, new exit unload safety bar added. New boats were ordered for the attraction but they were the wrong size and did not fit into the flume. *October 4, 2009 - Living with the Land re-opens again *January 2010 - Living with the Land closes to change load area, dispatch console, and add the 6 new ADA boats and the 12 new ten rowboats. Also to repaint certain show scenes and reactivate the rainforest's rain scene. February 2010 - Living with the Land re-opens Gallery External links *Official website Category:Dark Rides Category:Disney Attractions Category:Epcot Category:Future World Category:Water Rides Category:Boat attractions Category:Attractions in Epcot Category:Walt Disney World